Hear ye, hear ye—Ear tubes are normal, will make your child more popular*
Note: This column appears in the 3/31 issue of The Glendale Star and the 4/1 issue of the Peoria Times Things that seem crazy and that I knew nothing about are pretty standard in parenthood. One of those things: tubes in kids’ ears. Around our daughter’s 17th ear infection, my wife lamented that it may be time to have tubes inserted into her ears. I was like, “Ha, ha … good one. Tubes.” And she was like, “No, seriously.” She explained to me that tubes are frequently inserted into some children's ears as a means of preventing the frequency of ear infections. I immediately pictured our daughter walking around the house with straw-like tubes projecting out of the side of her head—sort of like the knobs in Frankenstein’s ears—which would leak ear fluid all over the carpet. This did not seem normal to me. I later came to learn that the tubes border on microscopic, and that their insertion requires a very minor surgery. I began to ask other parents if they had ever heard of such a thing,...